Nicola Clement is ranked number three in Australia’s Top 50 E-commerce Leaders and recently completed her Executive MBA at the University of Oxford‘s Saïd Business School. As a self-proclaimed profitability evangelist with over 23 years in digital and retail, she has pioneered e-commerce transformations across diverse industries, growing online revenues dramatically while championing human-centered strategies that deliver sustainable shareholder value.
Background
Nicola began her career with a Bachelor of Science in zoology, minoring in microbiology and geology, from a university in New Zealand. Unsure of a path in labs or zoos, she pivoted after working in wineries, completing a one-year postgraduate diploma in marketing and management. Her first professional role was in the marketing department of an agricultural chemical company around 2001, where she bridged science and communication, helping research teams navigate labeling and government approvals while simplifying technical information for sales teams and farmers. There, her boss tasked her with exploring “this thing called the internet,” leading her to build an early online library for material safety data sheets, igniting her passion for digital through hypothesis-driven design, data analysis, and user feedback.
She advanced to an SAP professional services consulting firm, managing the intranet, website, and marketing while pioneering tech adoptions like Windows XP and BlackBerrys in New Zealand. During a UK working holiday, she worked in financial services and health insurance, innovating by externalizing CRM through live web forms for claims and sign-ups, and inventing server-side traffic splitting for conversion rate optimization in 2006. Returning to retail, she launched Quiksilver’s online sales in 2009, facilitated its first $1 million sale to SurfStitch, and at Kathmandu, grew online sales from $3.5 million to $14 million in two years, excelling in Australia’s inaugural Click Frenzy in 2012.
Nicola expanded to fashion at Forever New, launching the New Zealand website and digital channels with 100% year-on-year growth over two years. Seeking scale, she joined Jetstar in aviation, honing business transformation skills. She then led at Smiggle before becoming General Manager of Omni Experience and E-commerce at Myer in 2019, growing online sales from $250 million to over $800 million by 2022 amid COVID-19 crises. Leading 75 direct reports and funding 100 more via IT, she managed end-to-end customer touchpoints, data-driven roadmaps, and monthly business cases to the C-suite, sustaining 10,000 jobs by scaling online from 12% to business-critical levels.
In 2022, Nicola stepped away from Myer to pursue her Executive MBA at Oxford, later consulting for and becoming Chief Experience Officer at Adore Beauty, a 24-year online beauty retailer expanding to physical stores. She introduced agile processes, design thinking, and RFP expertise, turning around profitability through basics like team alignment and cost optimization. She concluded at Adore in December 2024 and now consults while seeking her next role, having navigated non-linear paths across agriculture, tech consulting, aviation, outdoor gear, fashion, toys, department stores, and beauty.
Core Expertise
Nicola specializes in e-commerce profitability optimization, omnichannel transformations, and human-centered digital strategy across retail sectors. Ranked among Australia’s top e-commerce leaders and a global Top 50 CX Influencer, she is renowned for delivering EBIT growth by scrutinizing operational, marketing, tech, and people costs, rejecting vanity metrics like sales in favor of sustainable profit in high-acquisition, inflationary environments.
Her approach integrates curiosity-driven innovation rockets—synthesizing customer data, ideating, hypothesizing, prototyping, and testing—with agile squads, customer journey mapping, and “red chair” reminders for customer inclusion in decisions. At Myer, she balanced crisis adrenaline with long-term roadmaps; at Adore, she simplified tech stacks and audited contracts for profit gains. Nicola excels at ruthless prioritization, building C-suite business cases (e.g., 10x ROI promises), fostering authentic cultures, and leveraging soft skills to secure funding, emphasizing people-process-technology over tech-alone “digital transformation.”
Academia
Nicola holds a Bachelor of Science in zoology, with minors in microbiology and geology, earned from a New Zealand university after excelling in maths, science, and English at a traditional school.
She completed an Executive MBA at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, in 2023 after two prior attempts—one at age 24 lacking experience, another derailed by 2009 GFC redundancy. Amid Myer’s COVID demands, she applied on a caffeine-fueled three-day hyper-focus, securing admission and a 50% scholarship despite her small-town New Zealand roots. Pursued to invest in herself after decades of on-the-job learning, it honed communication for boards and CFOs, validating her practical knowledge.
Balancing near-full-time Adore work with Oxford via rigid scheduling (early mornings, runs, classes), Nicola views education as a “gift” for structured growth. She champions lifelong learning, recommending books like Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug for usability, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, and influences like Simon Sinek, Brené Brown, and Jacinda Ardern.
Key Perspectives that Nicola Clement Shares on the Podcast
Nicola advocates long-term “horizon” thinking over quarterly short-termism, arguing true business transformation (people, then process, then technology) takes 3-5 years to stick, not quarters. Businesses planning for decades build durable advantages by inspiring alignment to purpose—generating profits to drive missions, as per Tony Hsieh—while sustaining marathons, not sprints, matching pace to goals like family legacies or 50-year enterprises like century-old Myer.
She champions human-centered leadership: curiosity, authenticity, and customer/employee-first strategies yield superior shareholder outcomes, wrapped in data-backed cases for skeptical boards. Using frameworks like innovation rockets and verbatim soundbites, Nicola demystifies non-linear careers, warns against “vaporware” startups overselling MVPs, and stresses genuine connection—people see through inauthenticity—fostering win-win ecosystems, as with her investment in retail tech startup Brauz.
A Quote from this Conversation with Nicola Clement
“I feel that so much of the barriers that we have in our life, a lot of the time we’ve actually put them there ourselves.”
